“…to-day the editor of Harriet holds a show of his own, and wins applause by slaying whomsoever the mob with a turn of the thumb bids him slay…”……………………………………………loosely adapted from Juvenal, Satires (III.36)

For a beautiful example of everything George Orwelltried to expose in Politics and the English Language, read The Poetry Foundation’s letter just posted on Blog:Harriet[click here]

In the Letter, the Editors try to cover up the appalling messTravis Nichols made out of what had been one of the most vibrant poetry discussion sites in America.

Today Harriet is at Zero!

Yes, the Like/Dislike thumbs are down at last, having served their purpose — which was simply to remove four figures, Thomas Brady, Alan Cordle, Desmond Swords and Christopher Woodman.

Now with Harriet on her back in the blood soaked dirt, weakly raising her left hand for mercy, Travis’ hysterical fans indicate no mercy — and the stunt becomes a fait accompli. Harriet is dead now for sure.

Of course there’s no mention of any of that in the letter. Just spin, faulty figures, bluff, and bravado — like the last administration on the state of Iraq in the months following the invasion!

Indeed, not one word of this Poetry Foundation letter is truthful. Like the stats in it — foully cooked! Everybody knows you can cut the stats on a blog in a thousand different ways, and not one of them will give you a true figure. Travis has cut the Harriet stats all in his own favor — and just look at him up there in the picture to see where he’s at!

And dear Catherine Halley, the On-Line Editor at The Poetry Foundation, you should be ashamed to add your signature to that letter. You did your best to prevent the debacle, we know that, and are tremendously disappointed in you for capitulating now.

We’d love to post a list of the myriad voices who have vanished from Harriet since the ugly puscht, lending us their support through their silence. Those of you who know the Blog can trot out their names with ease. Their absence cries shame on you, Travis and Catherine. Shame on your petty vendetta.

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14 Comments

thomasbrady said,

“If you find a comment to be off-topic, please use the “report” button and the Harriet staff will be duly notified.”

“Off-topic!” Oh yes, stamp out the “off-topic” by all means. If a conversation takes a fascinating right-turn, the Harriet staff will move into action. LOL

And how can minor intellects puff themselves if comments keep going “off-topic?”

I note that of Harriet’s top 10 most popular posts of 2009, 7 were during the SUMMER during the Brady, Cordle, Swords, Woodman era, and yet the article is spun so that the FALL was popular.

Nice try, Harriet.

The other 2 most viewed posts were in January, 2009, before we arrived, when the Obama inaugural was sweeping people up in its excitement.

Only 1 of the 10 most viewed posts was in the fall.

Again, nice try, Harriet. FAIL.

We need a true top 10 list of Harriet’s 2009.

How about the ‘post that vanished’ during the fall, when John Oliver Simon mocked the idea of curating a poetry reading?

How about Don Share calling Louis Menand, Luke Menand. I think he was confused because Harriet never got around to discussing ‘The Program Era’ by Mark McGurl, easily the most important book on creative writing published in 2009, if not the decade, reviewed by Menand in the New Yorker, noted on Harriet by Thomas Brady.

Or Travis Nichols comparing making comments on-line to a person talking in a cafe when someone is trying to read a book at the next table. ????

Christopher Woodman said,

Just a glance at the Posts for December 2009 alone gives the lie to Travis Nichols’ assertion that Harriet has been thriving since the banning of its most active and positive participants on September 1st, 2009, and the consequent exodus of all its best regulars:

Here’s A List of Posts and Comments on Harriet since the beginning of December 2009 — just look at those comments for enthusiasm!

ABIGAIL DEUTSCH
doing time, and rhyme, with “invictus”
12.19.09………………………………………………….No Comments

ANSELM BERRIGAN
A few minor items to add to a clamor
12.18.09………………………………………………….Comments (3)

ABIGAIL DEUTSCH
Marianne Moore in the Village Voice
12.02.09………………………………………………….Comments (7)

MELISSA FRIEDLING
Jerome
12.01.09………………………………………………….No Comments

There were 21 Posts from Dec 1st to the 19th.
There were a total of 215 comments in all during those 19 days.
There were an average of 11 comments per day during that period.
10 was the average number of comments per post.
There were 6 Posts with No Comments at all (29%)
There were 16 Posts with 4 comments or less (76%)
The most popular Post got 67 comments — click here for an in depth analysis of the emptiness of that one!

Christopher Woodman said,

On the other hand, there were a total of 864 Comments during the period in July as opposed to only 215 in December.

There were an average of 45 Comments per day in July (only 11 in December).

41 Comments was the average per post in July (only 10 in December).

There were no posts in July with “No Comments” (there were 6, or 29%, in December)

There were only 3 Posts in July with 4 comments or less (16, a whopping 76% no-shows, in December!)

The most popular Post in July got 255 Comments (in December 67 Comments was the maximum , and that was fluff — click here if you’ve forgotten).

~

Do take note that during this period Thomas Brady, Desmond Swords and Christopher Woodman all received strict warnings about frequency and length limits [click here], which they abided by until they were banned anyway without further warning or explanation on September 1st.

Also note that Christopher Woodman was placed “on moderation” on July 14th, seriously restricting his ability to join the Harriet discussions at all.

Finally, Travis Nichols posted his LIKE/DISLIKE Announcement [click here] on July 16th, and from that point onward almost all of Thomas Brady’s posts were immediately closed down with Red Votes.

~

There are many articles on Scarriet that present the facts as well as discuss the implications for Blog:Harriet and American poetry in general. Click here for an article that gathers together some more statistics, for example, and also quotes posts that were deemed offensive by the Harriet community (i.e. got closed down with RED!).

~

Footnote for Researchers
What you’re seeing here is important as The Poetry Foundation of America is lying — and what’s important, of course, is WHY IS THE PFoA LYING ??? (more anon on that on Scarriet, needless to say!)

Here’s how it actually looked day by day in July 2009, and were talking about the number and frequency of comments.

Christopher Woodman said,

July is supposed to be a slow month compared to the autumn, but July out-performed December in every area of popularity to the tune of 400%

August is usually the slowest month of all for blogging and, even so, on Harriet August out-performed December by 330% — and achieved that with only 19 posts in the first 19 days as opposed to December’s 21!

Christopher Woodman said,

Where Travis really gives away his game is in his list of The 10 Most Viewed Articles and Posts.

In fact, “views” are the most ambiguous of all statistics on blogs because they involve technical criteria that are extremely difficult to assess. If a reader just reads a post or article in passing along to the next, it is not credited with a specific “view” — and even if a reader spends 2 hours reading over all the 255 Comments on Joel Brouwer’s wonderful “Hayden Carruth” Article/Post (and for God’s sake, what’s the difference!), for example, there may still be no “view” at all.

“Views” are like “clicks,” and they may mean I’m just passing.

But here’s the bottom line. Blog:Harriet is a meeting place where poets talk to each other, so discussion is the only criterion that matters. It’s true, there are some excellent articles that don’t generate much discussion because they are visual or ineffable, Katie Hartsock’s post on Glass (!), for example, which really struck me, or Melissa Friedling’s poignant little videos, but if we are to determine what works on Harriet it’s got to be the number of comments PLUS the quality of the comments that matter.

By that criterion, June, July and August were by far the most successful months in 2009, and September, October and November were the failures, both in numbers and in quality.

Barren, the latter might even be called. Harriet deserted.

Travis’ minders, please take note, and you especially, Catherine Halley. Lots of people are listening, and this really does matter. The Poetry Foundation has got egg all over its face!

poetryandporse said,

Nichols’ strategy is now wholly transparent, and the claim that Harriet is going from strength to strength, when the majority of posts he mentions as most viewed, occured during the summer, is clearly iffy.

What that board is turning into is another space for the middle-aged nerdy clique of Gould, Johnson and Share, to spool out their boring opinions. Share doesn’t even have any himself, only second-hand quotes he fills his blog up with, and I think it is clear that for all his claims that his hands were tied in relation to Harriet, he was in with Nichols and hasn’t got the bottle to admit it.

poetryandporse said,

The people who run that blog where Johnson and Robbins talk, are also full of shit, going on about freedom of speech and yet immediately banning you three from the word go.

This is the rub, empty waffle about the rights of human beings, but only in the abstract, because as soon as someone comes and says something these bores don’t want to hear, they don’t even have the decency to tell you to your face, but engage in the sort of subterfuge Nichols does and prove they are all talking nonsense.

Christopher Woodmanlich back said,

In the month of September 2009 there were 37 Posts with a total of 322 Comments at an average of 8 Comments per post.

There were also 37 articles in the month just before Travis Nichols introduced the disastrous Like/Dislike scheme, i.e. June 20th to July 20th, 2009, with a total of 1,399 Comments at an average of 38 comments each. The most popular received 255 Comments (Joel Brouwer), and there were four others with well over 100. In September the most successful Post was also by Joel Brouwer but attracted only 29 Comments.

So it’s very important to observe that it was decidedly NOT the quality of the articles in September that generated so little interest — as our shadow-commentaries on Scarriet have shown so clearly (we loved them — click here to read Scarriet’s response to them!). No, it was the bad atmosphere Travis’ management created on Harriet that was the problem: everybody was paranoid, tongue-tied and afraid!

Just look at the comments his new article has elicited [click here]. Are these happy campers?

Christopher Woodman said,

12/22/2009We were hacked, and the user-name on the above comment was defaced. A number of editorial structures were also tampered with and passwords changed. We’re still a bit handicapped after the attack but functioning anyway.

Click hereto read a general comment on the intrusion — the event belongs even more to the concerns we raise in the new article about “Bright Star,” the Keats film, just above than it does with the rough and tumble of Travis’ “Final Card.”

One of the major concerns of Foetics is influence, and of course harrassment goes along with all that. Prizes are just the icing on the cake — banning, black-balling, anonymous calls to one’s work place, threats of law suits, and of course not getting read are all normal in the fast-moving world of American poetry-influence.

Hacking is a new one for us.

Christopher

P.S. If anyone has any idea as to what the defacement means, “Christopher Woodmanlich back,” we’d love to know. Perhaps it’s just to show us we have no feeling for Flarf or The New Thing!

[…] Congratulations, Harriet. You’ve managed your first 100 comment thread since you banned the demons who edit Scarriet. And anyone who forgets just how much better it was before the September 1st massacre should have a look at the raw statistics. […]